Kelly Clarkson: Thankful

Thursday 28 August 2003 21.19 EDT
First published on Thursday 28 August 2003 21.19 EDT

You bet she's thankful. After being turned down by every American record label for sounding "too black", this (white) former waitress won the American version of Pop Idol - which somehow doesn't carry the career-nobbling stigma it does here - and has sold nearly 2m albums.

While you might be loth to trust the judgment of the 7 million Americans who voted for her, she is really good, and not just by the subterranean standard of British reality TV.

Whatever you think of Thankful's mix of R&B and trashy slow ballads - and some of it, such as Diane Warren's Some Kind of Miracle, reeks - you can't deny that Clarkson is potential pop royalty. Like her fellow Texan Beyoncé Knowles, she has a background in the church, and it shows in the phrasing of the torchy The Trouble with Love Is. She dishes out funky contempt on Miss Independent, and is fierce on the co-written soul party piece You Thought Wrong.

The short road to obscurity may beckon Gareth and Will, but Clarkson won't be joining them just yet.